At the AAAS meeting in Vancouver, Igor Shvets described a project that could …

Advances in wind power have made well-sited turbines a very cost-effective method of generating power—when they're working. The variability of wind in even the best of sites, however, can cause wind farms to go from nothing to producing a power output that exceeds demand. This variability has made figuring out how to smooth out the energy produced with wind a major topic of research.

At the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of science, a panel on energy storage included a talk by Igor Shvets, a researcher at Trinity College in Dublin. Shvets is involved in the planning for an audacious scheme called Spirit of Ireland that would turn large areas of the west coast of that country into a renewable energy powerhouse. If the plan is rolled out to its full extent, Ireland could even end up sending its electricity under the Irish Sea to the UK.

Western Ireland lies on the Atlantic, and receives a steady supply of wind. According to Shvets, that wind has, over time, stripped off the best soil from many of the rugged areas of coast. As a result, it's not very productive agriculturally, and is sparsely inhabited. All of that makes it a perfect site for on-shore wind, which is substantially cheaper to build and maintain than the offshore turbines that Europe's high population density often requires.

None of that, of course, helps with wind's intermittent nature. But the low population and poor soil should enable Spirit of Ireland to implement a form of energy storage via a technique called pumped hydro.

Pumped hydro is mature technology that's in use in both the US and Europe. All it requires are two reservoirs at different altitudes. When energy supplies are high, water is pumped into the upper reservoir. When electricity is needed, the water is allowed to drop back into the lower one, generating hydropower in the process. It's somewhat limited, however, by the need to have two appropriately sized reservoirs and a steady supply of water. As a result, the largest facility in Europe holds only nine Gigawatt-hours (Gwhr) of power.

Spirit of Ireland has identified 60 potential sites for the upper reservoirs, and most of them can hold about 100Gwhr, many quite a bit more. The lower reservoir? That would be the ocean, which obviates any issues with a steady supply of water. In the four regions that Spirit of Ireland is studying, the steady winds that have eliminated the best soil have left behind a largely impermeable layer of rock that should prevent the salt water from seeping away from the reservoirs in significant volume.

In most cases, the valleys the project has identified are within a few kilometers of the ocean, but several hundred meters higher. In several locations, a single spur of land has enough large valleys to support several reservoirs. The plan is to build earthen reservoirs that fit into the landscape, and to bury the pipes that lead from the reservoir to the ocean, along with the entire pumping/generator station. It will also use relatively low power lines that can be supported with wooden poles, which will also minimize the change in the landscape.

The general plan is that wind power won't be placed directly on the grid. Instead, it will be aggregated and fed into these reservoirs, which will convert it into a consistent, baseline power source. The reservoirs will also hold enough of a buffer that, in all but fairly unusual events, power won't be disrupted—Shvets suggested that problems would probably arise about once every five years, based on historic wind patterns.

If the project can scale up fast enough, Shvets thinks that electricity can become an export product for Ireland. The UK, he pointed out, has a lot of coal and nuclear plants coming to the end of their life expectancies, and will have to replace them while facing a European mandate to increase the use of renewable power. This may raise the price of electricity there, and make running some DC power lines under the Irish Sea a viable option.

Will all of this work? Everything about it is pretty mature technology, so there's technically no reason why it shouldn't. The thing that strikes me as as the biggest concern is the one thing we don't have any experience with: the large scale storage of salt water in elevated reservoirs. There would seem to be a significant chance that it will seep into the local environment, with results that are difficult to predict.

Even with that caution, it's a very intriguing plan. The world will eventually have to learn to power itself in a sustainable manner, and storage will almost certainly need to play a role in whatever comes next. This is the first idea I've seen that efficiently scales energy storage to the sorts of levels that are likely to be needed.

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A celebration of Cassini

A celebration of Cassini

A celebration of Cassini

Nearly 20 years ago, the Cassini-Huygens mission was launched and the spacecraft has spent the last 13 years orbiting Saturn. Cassini burned up in Saturn's atmosphere, and left an amazing legacy.

Ireland already has some experience with this kind of technology on the East coast, but the West coast would be so much more suitable in many ways. It's exciting to think that Ireland could go 100% renewable on this technology, salt water egress problems accepted.

The Spirit of Ireland guys turned up in Ireland back around 2009 with their great scheme to turn the country into a massive energy exporter, and make thousands of jobs at the time. After the media hype died down what was left was a lot of informed people (i.e. engineers, economists, and those who have been active in the renewable energy business for years) asking them to answer some more detailed questions on their scheme.

I haven't really paid attention to them in a few years, but SoI never really seemed to come up with meat to put on the bones of this idea. Even today most of their website doesn't seem to have been updated since 2009. So the opinion of informed experts in this area I believe has remained: "the Spirit of Ireland is unrealistic in its every aspect."

The Spirit of Ireland guys turned up in Ireland back around 2009 with their great scheme to turn the country into a massive energy exporter, and make thousands of jobs at the time. After the media hype died down what was left was a lot of informed people (i.e. engineers, economists, and those who have been active in the renewable energy business for years) asking them to answer some more detailed questions on their scheme.

I haven't really paid attention to them in a few years, but SoI never really seemed to come up with meat to put on the bones of this idea. Even today most of their website doesn't seem to have been updated since 2009. So the opinion of informed experts in this area I believe has remained: "the Spirit of Ireland is unrealistic in its every aspect."

I don't know much about SoI, but AFAIK the argument that hydro-storage is not economic assumes that we can continue to use non-green sources such as coal and gas. I would happily have taxpayers (including me) subsidize the kick-off of these green projects if it helps the transition to an economy that is based completely on renewables (which is the necessary long-term solution).

There are already some of those plants around the country. When I was a kid I went on a tour of the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poulaphouca one for a school trip. More of these sounds like a great idea, we need more renewable energy.

That is a shockingly frustrating and quite sad story. Surely the project can still go ahead? If they sell the land I fear some god awful private development will take place with zero benefit to NI as a whole.

As for the main story, I too would be worried about salt-water storage, and with quantities of that size what impact would there be to the coastal life in that area, even if they do build the pipe 4-5miles out to sea.

Can't edit posts? It was Turlough Hill http://www.esb.ie/main/about-esb/turlou ... ations.jsp that I visited as a kid, the pumped storage one. Had to read wikipedia to figure that out! Poulaphouca is plain hydro, not pumped storage. Looks like Turlough Hill is the only pumped storage-type plant in the country atm.

In reading this it reminded me that we have exactly the same thing here in Chattanooga Tn. It's the Raccoon Mountain Pumped-Storage Plant (TVA). Visited it once as a kid and it was awesome at the time. Looks like the article pic is taken right off the Wikipedia page for that facility.

Wouldn't it be more economical to sell the hydro power for peak prices to Europe instead of turning it into yet another baseline plant?

Energy transfer capacity is limited. You need something to balance the power needs in roughly the same part of the grid - and besides, the main balancing factor (hydroelectric) has been exploited about as far as it can in Western Europe.

Nothing remotely interesting about it. Irish gov are planning water taxes and property taxes (on properties that already paid taxes per legal requirements on purchase). We're already getting raped to pay off Germany and the bets of the wealthy, while banks retain the arrogant decadence of the big boom times. Anyone that can't pay gets slipped out of their home and onto the street, or if they don't own a home; their salary is garnished. While banks chuckle out the side of their mouths and insist that everyone pays not just their results of poor decisions, but add in "oh you need a budget, spend within your means, stop wasting money" to the public that can't pay.

Bottom line is that the public will pay for this, and get nothing back for it; no actually we'll get more taxes and more stealth charges to pay for the running of it.

There already exists a 500MW interconnector between Britain and Northern Ireland (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HVDC_Moyle). There is also a 500MW connector under construction between the Republic of Ireland and Britain (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East%E2%80 ... rconnector). To put these figures in perspective, the average (peak) daily power consumption is roughly 40GW (60GW). EirGrid runs the grid for the whole of Ireland, and National Grid PLC runs the British grid.

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For this man to mention long term goals of selling electricity to Britain, but then mention the use of pumped storage as the means to this end, seems a bit silly. We've known how to use pumped storage for decades, and all of the suitable large scale sites (in the UK, at least) have been taken. The creation of additional sites would require huge upheaval of existing infrastructure, communities, farms and wildlife habitats. The time for building them was in the 50s and 60s when it was legally and politically easier.

A modern method of buffering power demand and production would be to utilise demand side management techniques. A grid composed of volatile power plants like wind and solar (clouds affect output dramatically) would need power consumers to be able to react to this volatility. This means your fridge should delay turning on its compressor if the grid isn't producing enough power. Effective use of this kind of technology, coupled with consumers being more willing to 'switch off' when required to do so (much like they have to do when there are water droughts... a very contemporary topic for those living in the south of England), is required with the increasing reliance on volatile renewables. This is the most efficient method, as electricity is only used when the natural phenomena behind the production is available, as opposed to now where electricity is used at will, regardless of the state of production.

Obviously this is not the complete solution to the matter. You can only turn off so many fridges, air conditioners (not so prevalent in Northern Europe), street lights, foundries etc. for so long, and the loss in demand by doing so would only make up a small proportion of the overall demand. It really does require consumers to be willing to 'switch off', unless you're happy with retaining a nuclear baseload or unless you believe that battery and supercapacitor storage is actually viable (so far I remain to be convinced).

With all the fresh and rain water in Ireland, the choice of using salt water seems weird, and potentially dangerous for the soil and the underground water. Fresh water pumped hydro is used in most of French hydro plants, for instance. They pump back the water to the higher reservoir at night, which makes economical sense because electricity is not used as much during the night, and it's billed cheaper at night to consumers too.

It requires a second reservoir instead of using the ocean, but that can be an advantage for tourism, fishing or fish farming and many other activities, and the reservoirs can be inland too, not just near the ocean. This system can also use valleys in mountainous areas that can't be used for much more than pasturing, which I think is better than some of the "barren" valleys mentioned, which we might need to reclaim in the future for agricultural purpose with the rising population needs. And fresh water is becoming an increasingly precious resource that we should start store and manage better.

Anyone know what the efficiency of pumped hydro is vs. straight wind? For example, if I put a megawatt of energy into pumping water up into a reservoir, how much do I get back in hydro?

Thanks-FF

I don't know what it is but I suppose it doesn't really matter. I understood it to be that the wind turbines supply power to the grid, and any extra power goes into filling the reservoir.

If that is how they end up doing it it means that 100% of active wind power is being used for something, either direct power or "charging the battery" if you will. We would lose some in the conversion to hydro electric power, but has to be better than just wind power, no?

The reason to use sea water is that Ireland has an almost unique geology along its west coast, U shaped glacial valleys overlooking the sea, by building a dam across the mouth of such a valley the construction cost is reduced by 45%, the resorvoirs being planned have a capacity of up to 100 GW hours.

As anyone who has ever attempted to maintain machinery along the west coast of Ireland will attest, salt water spray persists up to 10 miles inland, therefore the ecology is adapted. The geology of these valleys also ensure that contamination of groundwater is almost impossible, however good sense informs that the permeability is tested and the valley lined if necessary.

The other thing to bear in mind is that windspeeds in Ireland are world class, the windiest areas in the world are Ireland, Scotland and Tierra del Fuego. The average windspeed at 75m is 9-11m/sec along the west coast

Ireland already routinely accomodates up to 50% instanteneous wind penetration and wind already provides in excess of 12% of annual demand with a small fleet of turbines.

The Spirit of Ireland guys turned up in Ireland back around 2009 with their great scheme to turn the country into a massive energy exporter, and make thousands of jobs at the time. After the media hype died down what was left was a lot of informed people (i.e. engineers, economists, and those who have been active in the renewable energy business for years) asking them to answer some more detailed questions on their scheme.

I haven't really paid attention to them in a few years, but SoI never really seemed to come up with meat to put on the bones of this idea. Even today most of their website doesn't seem to have been updated since 2009. So the opinion of informed experts in this area I believe has remained: "the Spirit of Ireland is unrealistic in its every aspect."

I highly recommend reading these sources. The original 2008 proposal, which Tor expressed blanket skepticism about (which he was roundly criticized for, not least by the aforementioned Igor Shvets), was for energy independence within 5 years from combined wind and stored hydro. Tor asked such questions as: If wind is not competitive without subsidies, how is wind + hydro going to be competitive?, and observed things like: You can't achieve energy independence in 5 years; it will take 5 years to get through the permitting process and build the first; and Replacing existing infrastructure with solar and hydro is not going to happen - it requires many billions of Euros worth of premature capital retirement, a pointless waste.

The 2010 response admitted that much of what Tor said was correct, observed that: a) Ireland already has enough power; and b) there are already plenty of wind farms in the planning stages. They also observed that of all the potential hydro storage sites, only 4 or 5 were large enough to be economical. Their 2010 model involves only building hydro storage facilities. They apparently think they can pay their costs and make money through arbitrage of high-use and low-use pricing, along with salvage of excess generation from wind power?

One of their weaker assumptions is the exporting of power. Yes, Ireland can sell electricity to the UK, but it's relatively cheap, and faster, for the UK to build gas-powered plants to meet any shortages. Also, power needs to be transmitted in relays - as Tor puts it, "If you want to supply Paris (say) with wind, then it is cheaper to build turbines near Paris (where there is not too much wind) than to transmit wind power from a windy place at great distance."

There's still the question of using sea water. One might reasonably ask: Wouldn't it be better to use a second fresh water lake (which need not be in proximity), thus adding recreational and scenic values (and perhaps even economic activities like fish farming), rather than introducing potentially destructive salt-water storage, with the potential harm not only to the local land and water but also to local sea life?

by building a dam across the mouth of such a valley the construction cost is reduced by 45%

Most reservoirs are built upon existing natural features, and it still costs a whooping €1.4B to build just one such reservoir and power station according to SoI, but on the other hand, it seems that's also about the revenue it would make in two years.

Don't get me wrong, I think renewable energy is the way to go, and if the valleys used as reservoir can't be put to agricultural use and the saltwater can't contaminate undeground fresh water, I am all for it. But the more eco-conscious you are, the more thorough environmental impact and real costs you require.

Hehe, I mentioned fish farming as one of the possible benefits of a fresh water reservoir, but now that I am thinking saltwater could work if it is ascertained not to leak underground, I have visions of "Kerry raised high altitude fresh salmon 3 punts a pound."

OK, euros now, I lived in Ireland during the transition, when the DART trip to Bray was still "ouahn poont torty, luv."

Hehe, I mentioned fish farming as one of the possible benefits of a fresh water reservoir, but now that I am thinking saltwater could work if it is ascertained not to leak underground, I have visions of "Kerry raised high altitude fresh salmon 3 punts a pound."

OK, euros now, I lived in Ireland during the transition, when the DART trip to Bray was still "ouahn poont torty, luv."

If the water is deep and cool enough, one may even have some luck with cod.

Tor asked such questions as: If wind is not competitive without subsidies, how is wind + hydro going to be competitive?

Tor just added the costs together, which is naive. Currently wind produces lots of power on windy days, depressing the price, and little power on calm days, when electricity is expensive. Any storage would help wind achieve a higher average selling price, and thus need less subsidy.

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Their 2010 model involves only building hydro storage facilities. They apparently think they can pay their costs and make money through arbitrage of high-use and low-use pricing, along with salvage of excess generation from wind power?

Makes sense just to buy electricity on the spot market and focus on the pumped hydro side of the business if there are enough wind turbines on the grid already to provide the necessary price differential. I would have thought that they would have enough land in windy locations to want to put wind turbines on it as well, but they are probably better focusing on the pumped hydro side first.

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One of their weaker assumptions is the exporting of power. Yes, Ireland can sell electricity to the UK, but it's relatively cheap, and faster, for the UK to build gas-powered plants to meet any shortages. Also, power needs to be transmitted in relays - as Tor puts it, "If you want to supply Paris (say) with wind, then it is cheaper to build turbines near Paris (where there is not too much wind) than to transmit wind power from a windy place at great distance."

If this was true, then wind turbines (and all other power plants) would already sprout proportionally to population density.

Quote:

There's still the question of using sea water. One might reasonably ask: Wouldn't it be better to use a second fresh water lake (which need not be in proximity), thus adding recreational and scenic values (and perhaps even economic activities like fish farming), rather than introducing potentially destructive salt-water storage, with the potential harm not only to the local land and water but also to local sea life?

Not sure what your supposed harm to local sea life is compared to using two fresh water lakes? But they absolutely need to be in proximity, as pumping water laterally is an expensive waste - you only get a return from the vertical distance when you let it out. Also, pumped storage is relatively poor for other uses due to much larger fluctuations in the water height, but again I don't know what the difference is for fresh water or salt water for your other activities?

Will be interesting to see if they can get the investment to get the first one built, at least.

In Ireland wind has a guaranteed floor price of 6.8c per kw/h, last Thursday for example the wholesale price in the Irish electricity market ranged from 4c to 16c depending on the time of day, the wholesale price in the UK deviated more sharply ranging from 3.5p to 28p.

The UK and Irish governments are currently negotiating the inter market trading rules.

The floor price for wind energy in the UK is far higher and there are frequent periods when National Grid are actively seeking a home for large quantities :)

Cool, and if it rains that't frosting on the cake (so to speak). The west coast of Michigan has an elevated topography especially around Sleeping Bear Dunes. Prime wind too. However' also prime real estate for vacationers and home owners..

A modern method of buffering power demand and production would be to utilise demand side management techniques. A grid composed of volatile power plants like wind and solar (clouds affect output dramatically) would need power consumers to be able to react to this volatility. This means your fridge should delay turning on its compressor if the grid isn't producing enough power. Effective use of this kind of technology, coupled with consumers being more willing to 'switch off' when required to do so (much like they have to do when there are water droughts... a very contemporary topic for those living in the south of England), is required with the increasing reliance on volatile renewables. This is the most efficient method, as electricity is only used when the natural phenomena behind the production is available, as opposed to now where electricity is used at will, regardless of the state of production.

Obviously this is not the complete solution to the matter. You can only turn off so many fridges, air conditioners (not so prevalent in Northern Europe), street lights, foundries etc. for so long, and the loss in demand by doing so would only make up a small proportion of the overall demand. It really does require consumers to be willing to 'switch off', unless you're happy with retaining a nuclear baseload or unless you believe that battery and supercapacitor storage is actually viable (so far I remain to be convinced).

I am really starting to think a nuclear baseload is basically unavoidable in any real world low carbon wind powered grid (certainly for the UK). www.bmreports.com historic data says it all there are basically days to weeks of near zero wind output across the UK (especially in winter when high pressure systems make it very cold so high electrical demand but not very windy). Dynamic load systems deal with hour to hour generation fluctuations not 24hrs+ dropouts. Also dynamic management systems (like anything else) can display pathological modes of action e.g. grid controlled fridges/freezers could all cycle down during a period of low generation but then on mass restart at high duty-cycle due to maximum safe temps being exceeded if the situation continues for too long. In any case you need dynamic management just to make a pure nuclear/wind grid mix work let alone predominatly wind.

It really is wishful thinking to suggest we can have a mainly wind based grid and that dymanic management makes all the resulting problems go away. Unfortunatly, it is precisely this wishful thinking that appears to be driving policy & being used to drive public opinion on the matter.

One of their weaker assumptions is the exporting of power. Yes, Ireland can sell electricity to the UK, but it's relatively cheap, and faster, for the UK to build gas-powered plants to meet any shortages. Also, power needs to be transmitted in relays - as Tor puts it, "If you want to supply Paris (say) with wind, then it is cheaper to build turbines near Paris (where there is not too much wind) than to transmit wind power from a windy place at great distance."

If this was true, then wind turbines (and all other power plants) would already sprout proportionally to population density..

It is true, unfortunately grids are not necessarily built with efficiency as a top priority, a lot of this is due to the NIMBY effect or just the higher cost of real-estate. e.g. in the UK there is such a large north south energy imbalance that a new power plant in the south is worth 110% of the same capacity in the north in distribution losses alone. Doesn't mean they are having any big build outs down here though.